RS about racial evolution

Perhaps this is a good time to let Rudolf
Steiner explain Rudolf Steiner about this issue:

At the beginning of Earth-evolution,
the human being was part of a group-soul - as expressed in race,
blood, family and so on - to a far greater extent than was the
case later on. As evolution continues he becomes more and more
of an individual, develops his individuality. We have heard what
an important part certain forces play in the development of the
individuality during Earth-evolution: consciousness that is dependent
on the physical body; memory and remembrance which are dependent
upon the ether-body; and karma, whereby a man can make real progress,
in that his imperfections and faults do not remain but can be
overcome by him as he passes through one incarnation after another.
But the 'forms' or 'forces' created by thoughts and feelings,
although they detatch themselves from the human being and lead
an independent existence, are nevertheless closely united with
him, in that they leave vestiges behind; these vestiges, as they
are sent out by the 'I', contribute to the definition of the
individuality and man gradually divests himself of the qualities
belonging to the group-soul. The trend which will become more
and more general over the globe and will form the essential,
fundamental character of the Sixth epoch of culture, is no kind
of approach to a new group-soul, but far rather the laying aside
of the attributes of the group-soul. Intimately connected with
this is the fact that the spiritual guidance of human beings
will become more and more a matter individual to each one; they
will have greater inner freedom in this respect.

Anyone who has understood
the trend of the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind
will realise that a movement in this direction is in very truth
taking place in the human race. It is a fact that in ancient
times men lived under external leaders and teachers, but even
in those days, leadership was gradually becoming an inner concern.
Just as the outer form becomes an expression of the Individuality,
so does the path to the spiritual worlds taken by human beings
become more and more their individual concern. It is the duty
of those who have insight into the signs of the times to insist
that human beings have not remained stationary at an earlier
stage of development, that the forces once employed, cannot be
repeated in the same form, simply because men have gone forward
in their evolution. In the age that is coming, the souls of men
will become more and more mature, able to discern and perceive
those things of which Spiritual Science teaches today.

The 'Mystery of Golgotha',
as the essential Christ event, was an outer happening, striking
into the physical world; a future Christ Event will be an inner
concern, inasmuch as the soul of man has been so quickened by
the first Christ Event that in days to come, the way to Christ
will be found in the Spirit, out of the life of soul.

Wherever you look in Spiritual
Science as it is presented here, you will always find - even
in the case of very specialised details - that it is consistent
with your own powers of reason and free judgement, provided only
that you make a real effort to apply this free power of judgement.
In that the individual human being is all the time becoming more
accessible to influences from the spiritual world, the authority
of external leadership will gradually lose its weight. It is
very important to realise that the ancient wisdom exists and
must be understood, that understanding of it can constantly increase
if men's souls are open to the spiritual worlds and if they strive
to grasp this wisdom with their powers of reason. This is the
very essence of progressive evolution. However specialised the
subjects may be, appeal to individual reason and judgement must
never be excluded."

In that the individual
human being is all the time becoming more accessible to influences
from the spiritual world, the authority of external leadership
will gradually lose its weight.

And humanity is headed straight for anarchosophy,
i.e. individualistic spiritualized anarchism. That's what seems
to freak out the dialectical materialists of the left wing, who
wish to hijack the concepts of individual autonomy, alternative
lifestyles, and the erosion of racial differences in order to
usurp them for their own political agenda. Anthroposophy teaches
that racial differences and extermal authority are disappearing
as a result of the influences of Spiritual Hierarchies. So to
get rid of these Spiritual Hierarchies and discredit anthroposophists,
politically oriented materialistic anarchists invent ways to
accomplish this by insisting that spiritual science is an ideology
seeking to keep people locked up in their racial group souls
forever and send them on various Star Trek-inspired "racial
missions", subjected to some anthroposophical fascist, semi-Nazi
authority. The result is utter falsehood and misrepresentations,
of course - a fact of which they are probably very much aware.

At the beginning of Earth-evolution,
the human being was part of a group-soul - as expressed in race,
blood, family and so on - to a far greater extent than was the
case later on. As evolution continues he becomes more and more
of an individual, develops his individuality. We have heard what
an important part certain forces play in the development of the
individuality during Earth-evolution: consciousness that is dependent
on the physical body; memory and remembrance which are dependent
upon the ether-body; and karma, whereby a man can make real progress,
in that his imperfections and faults do not remain but can be
overcome by him as he passes through one incarnation after another.

It seems to me that Tarjei and other list
members are not quite decided about which tack they prefer to
pursue in this exchange. We could either discuss what we think
Steiner said about racial evolution and its ostensibly progressive
nature, or we could discuss whether his stated views on this
and related topics qualify as racist. Or we could do both. But
it would move things along if Tarjei (or anyone else) could clarify
which of these is at stake -- do you think that the Steiner passages
I quoted do not express his actual views, or do you simply disagree
that some of these views can be characterized as racist?

What Tarjei quotes here is quite compatible with what I quoted
earlier; in Steiner's teachings, racial theory and evolutionary
theory went hand in hand. Hence if we want to talk about Steiner's
views on racial evolution, as Tarjei's chosen title for
this post puts it, then we'll need to relate the several quoted
passages to one another. Here is a brief attempt to do so.

In Tarjei's preferred passage, Steiner addresses the overcoming
of imperfections and faults. When these imperfections and faults
are correlated to particular racial groups, this idea is racist.
(Whether it is immoral is another question.) Souls do not overcome
their imperfections by incarnating in ever higher racial and
ethnic forms. To hold otherwise is, in my view, to endorse a
very obvious variety of racism.

Just as the outer form
becomes an expression of the Individuality, so does the path
to the spiritual worlds taken by human beings become more and
more their individual concern. It is the duty of those who have
insight into the signs of the times to insist that human beings
have not remained stationary at an earlier stage of development,
that the forces once employed, cannot be repeated in the same
form, simply because men have gone forward in their evolution.

There is no such thing as going forward or
backward in evolution. When the notion of moving forward in evolution
is directly tied to race, this idea becomes racist. No race is
more evolutionarily advanced than any other race. To hold otherwise
is to endorse a very obvious variety of racism.

In that the individual
human being is all the time becoming more accessible to influences
from the spiritual world, the authority of external leadership
will gradually lose its weight. It is very important to realise
that the ancient wisdom exists and must be understood, that understanding
of it can constantly increase if men's souls are open to the
spiritual worlds and if they strive to grasp this wisdom with
their powers of reason. This is the very essence of progressive
evolution.

When the idea of progressive evolution is
mixed in with the idea of racial missions and successive incarnations
in a series of racial forms, it becomes inescapably racist, since
these racial forms are then placed into an imagined ascending
order. In reality, no race is higher or lower than any other
race. To hold otherwise is to endorse a very obvious variety
of racism. Furthermore, to claim that certain peoples and races
are less open to the spiritual worlds than others, as Steiner
did, exacerbates the racist elements in this theory of racial
evolution. No racial or ethnic group as such is any more or less
open to the spiritual worlds than any other. To hold otherwise
is... well, you get the picture.

I do not think that this assessment involves any peculiar definition
of racism. There is nothing unusual about saying that the idea
of higher and lower races, more advanced and less advanced races,
more perfect and less perfect races, is racist. I encourage some
anthroposophist, any anthroposophist, to offer an argument to
the contrary.

Tarjei also writes:

Anthroposophy teaches that racial differences
and extermal authority are disappearing as a result of the influences
of Spiritual Hierarchies. So to get rid of these Spiritual Hierarchies
and discredit anthroposophists, politically oriented materialistic
anarchists invent ways to accomplish this by insisting that spiritual
science is an ideology seeking to keep people locked up in their
racial group souls forever and send them on various Star Trek-inspired
"racial missions", subjected to some anthroposophical
fascist, semi-Nazi authority.

That is not what critics of anthroposophical racism argue. We
argue that spiritual science is an ideology seeking to free people
from their racial group souls via a process of racial advancement
toward the Universal Human, by progressing from lower racial
forms to higher racial forms and eventually escaping racial and
ethnic particularity itself. Racial missions, good and evil races,
and racial evolution are all necessary steps along the way to
this concept of perfection. Since Tarjei and I seem to agree
on the broad outlines of what Steiner actually taught about racial
evolution, I think it would make considerably more sense for
Tarjei to explain, at long last, why he thinks this ideology
is not racist.

There is no such thing as going forward
or backward in evolution. When the notion of moving forward in
evolution is directly tied to race, this idea becomes racist.
No race is more evolutionarily advanced than any other race.
To hold otherwise is to endorse a very obvious variety of racism.

Peter you are an idiot! Forward, retardation,
going backward, Oh what an unlearned child you are. Because Evolving
is seemingly forward it makes a nice term doesn't it? The condition
of retardation doesn't merely come from races... or races at
all. Retardation comes from Retarding beings. You are such a
retard. And with every shrunken headed concept you prove how
you serve the very retarded thinking that has set back entire
cultures with utter stupidity.

Retarding beings keep idiots like you in service
presenting retarded concepts and these then infect, and inflame
the various retarded ideologies that you dally with. Racism is
retarded when it comes out of your mouth. Antisemeitism is just
common intellectual fodder, divorced from Archangels or any thing
to do with concepts and ideals beyond your immature and narrow
scope. You Serve Retarded thinking and therefore evolution does
go backward you dim with. Racism for you is leveling and dismissing
qualites inhereent in different language based cultures, but
the individual I Am who goes forward to brotherhood and idealism
transcends all this bullshit you wallow in.

Upwards in the thinking world, where idealism
lives, brotherhood prevails. Descending into the constipation
of your body which you call thinking, narrows down to your own
small intestinal tract and amounts to digestive will thinking.
Thank you, Hitler felt the same way as you. How, how ever did
such creatures as yourself ever imagine that you could equally
participate with thinking individuals who have attained actual
ideals?

Obviously someone who makes such idiot blanket
statements that have no grounding, no reality and no substance
has no idea about how true brotherhood is won. It is not won
by not understanding the virtues of various cultures, Italian,
French, German, Native American, Jewish..Chinese... it means
that one studies the general and specific, but certainly, far
above your examination of second hand reality, is the fact of
how the distrubution of various qualites were meted out by the
Divine. A divine that has to pass the test of your egotism and
stupidity before it can be taken up. Meanwhile, you serve active
retardation of human ideals. In other words, evolution does goe
backward just beccause of your thinking.

Another reason for calling you an idiot is
that there is no Divine in you examination of reality. It is
all a fatal show, a play, a ploy and you have failed to touch
the depth of the science of how the etheric body, releases the
life tableau, and NDE experiences reveal enormous dimensions
of the godhead that your egotism will not allow. Now Nietzsche
could call Christ an idiot and one saw who was doing the speaking
for Nietzsche. I call you an idiot because you don't know who
is doing the speaking for your own pathetic, immature, unexplored
and failed ideas.

To even have an idea, might mean you have
to think... but retardation of ideas, retardation of humanity,
retardation of brotherhood is professed with shere egotism, blindness
and cold cunning. It destroys your whole Ecological and Green
as well as social marxist idealism, because these ideas are not
rooted in any reality what so ever. They have never been researched
with the depth of Consciousness that grasps the whole framework
of evolution and divinity as the unfolding magnificence of the
I Am in humanity.

The fact that you cannot detect the difference
between true idealism and dialectical materialism allows anybody
with half a heart to scorn and reject your illogical platforms
as both immature and lacking in understanding the sweep of I
AM history all the way back to Saturn evolution. You are an unlearned,
unresearched, one track intellectual without a compass for truth.

You are a pygmie and everyone who thinks as
you do, prove themselves to be pygmies and slaves of Ahriman's
intellectual college of idiots. You haven't had an original thought
ever. You ride on a stream of idiots just like yourself and you
are jealous and envious that Dr. Steiner did his homework and
so ourshines any of you egotistical worms that you think you
can come to the dead carcass of sprirtual science and, like some
dumb ass buzzard peck at his flesh.

WRONG! The level of insight on this list alone,
reveals the shrivelled, dried husks of thought you devour as
food. Steiner is not buzzard food for the likes of you. The gods
themselves feast on the communion that Steiner shared with humanity.
You, however, failed to get an invitation to the party.

There is no such thing as going forward
or backward in evolution. When the notion of moving forward in
evolution is directly tied to race, this idea becomes racist.
No race is more evolutionarily advanced than any other race.
To hold otherwise is to endorse a very obvious variety of racism.

"In the latter Atlantean
time men were different one from another, some having retained
a high degree of clairvoyant ability. This faculty did not vanish
suddenly, but was still present in many of the men who took part
in the great migration from west to east. In others, however,
it had already disappeared. There were advanced persons and retarded
persons and, in accordance with the whole nature of evolution
at that time, we can understand that the least advanced were
those who were the most clairvoyant, for in a certain way they
had remained stationary and had preserved the old Atlantean character.
The most advanced were those who had already achieved a physical
perceiving of the world, thus approaching our form of day-consciousness.
It was they who, ceased to see the spiritual world clairvoyantly
at night, and who during their waking hours saw objects with
sharper contours. That little handful of whom we have already
spoken, who were led by the greatest initiate (generally known
as Manu*) and his pupils deep into Asia and thence fructified
the other cultures, just this handful, being composed of the
most advanced men of that time, first lost the ancient gift of
clairvoyance for the ordinary relationships of life.

For them the true day-consciousness,
in which we see physical objects sharply contoured, became ever
clearer. Their great leader led this group farthest into Asia,
so that they could live in isolation; otherwise they would have
come too closely in touch with other peoples who still preserved
the old clairvoyance. Only because they remained separated from
other peoples for a time could they grow into a new type of man.
A colony was established in inner Asia, whence the great cultural
streams could flow into the most varied peoples.

Northern India was the first
country to receive its new cultural current from this center.
It has already been pointed out that these little groups of cultural
pioneers nowhere found un-populated territory. Earlier still,
before their great migration from west to east, there had been
other wanderings, and whenever new stretches of land rose from
the sea, they were peopled by the wanderers. The persons sent
out from this colony in Asia had to mix with other peoples, all
of whom were more backward than they who had been led by Manu.
Among these other peoples were many persons who had retained
the old clairvoyance.

It was not the custom of the
initiates to establish colonies as this is done today; they colonized
in a different way. They knew that they had to start with the
souls of the persons whom they met in the lands that were to
be colonized. The emissaries did not impose what they had to
say. They reckoned with what they found. A balance was reached
that took into account the needs of the old inhabitants. This
reckoned with their religious views, which were based on the
memory of earlier epochs, and also with the old clairvoyant disposition.
So it was natural that only a handful of the most advanced could
develop true concepts. The great masses could form only ideas
that were a sort of compromise between the old Atlantean and
the post-Atlantean attitudes. Therefore, we find in all these
countries, in India, in Persia, in Egypt, whenever the different
post-Atlantean cultures appeared, religious ideas which for that
age are less advanced, less cultivated; which are nothing but
a sort of continuation of the old Atlantean ideas."

It seems to me that Tarjei and other list
members are not quite decided about which tack they prefer to
pursue in this exchange. We could either discuss what we think
Steiner said about racial evolution and its ostensibly progressive
nature, or we could discuss whether his stated views on this
and related topics qualify as racist. Or we could do both. But
it would move things along if Tarjei (or anyone else) could clarify
which of these is at stake -- do you think that the Steiner passages
I quoted do not express his actual views, or do you simply disagree
that some of these views can be characterized as racist?

There was nothing wrong with the passages
you quoted; of course they expressed what Steiner had in mind.
His books and lectures are self-explanatory. But you've proven
yourself incapable of grasping anything Steiner said or wrote.

What Tarjei quotes here is quite compatible
with what I quoted earlier; in Steiner's teachings, racial theory
and evolutionary theory went hand in hand.

Of course everything Steiner said and wrote
is mutually compatible, but you're determined never to understand
why.

There is no such thing as going forward
or backward in evolution.

Perhaps you should write your own evolutionary
theory and see how well it catches on.

Since Tarjei and I seem to agree on the
broad outlines of what Steiner actually taught about racial evolution,

No Peter, we do not agree on what Steiner
taught about evolution, racial or otherwise, for the simple reason
that you deny the influence of the spiritual world in this context.
You also deny that evolution involves any progress whatsoever,
backwards or forwards.

I think it would make considerably more
sense for Tarjei to explain, at long last, why he thinks this
ideology is not racist.

I don't think the gods are racists. But if
you insist upon understanding evolution and race in the theosophical-anthroposophical
context better than me, you should answer Detlef's question about
Blavatsky and the yellow, red, brown and black races.

Because Evolving is seemingly forward it
makes a nice term doesn't it? The condition of retardation doesn't
merely come from races... or races at all. Retardation comes
from Retarding beings.

We don't disagree about that. Steiner did indeed teach that retardation
comes from retarded beings (for example, those who decline to
accept Christ as the Leader of humankind). He also taught that
these retarded beings will incarnate into lower racial forms,
into backward races, because for Steiner spiritual advancement
and retardation were directly tied to physical and racial advancement
and retardation. That idea is racist, in my view. The entire
notion that some racial and ethnic groups are "more backward"
than others, as Steiner says in the snippet on the Aryan myth
that you posted today, is patently racist. If you disagree, you
just need to provide a non-racist account of the notion of backward
races and lower racial forms and so forth.

Racism for you is leveling and dismissing
qualites inhereent in different language based cultures, but
the individual I Am who goes forward to brotherhood and idealism
transcends all this bullshit you wallow in.

That is beside the point. The individual I Am is not and cannot
be the object of racist thinking. Only particular incarnations
and specific embodiments can be the object of racist thinking.
That is how Steiner used the term 'race', and that is how critics
of racist thought use the term. The conflation of language, culture,
ethnicity, and race is one of the fundamental roots of modern
racist thought.

Upwards in the thinking world, where idealism
lives, brotherhood prevails.

That may well be, but it has nothing to do with whether some
of Steiner's doctrines were racist. Lots of racists were idealists
who believed in brotherhood.

it means that one studies the general and
specific, but certainly, far above your examination of second
hand reality, is the fact of how the distrubution of various
qualites were meted out by the Divine.

The question is simply whether these qualities are distributed
along racial lines. Racists believe that they are. Non-racists
believe that they are not.

PS wrote: , making a perfect own-goal , just
to say it in a soccer-like way.

That is beside the point.

No this IS the point.

The individual I Am is not and cannot be the object of racist
thinking. Ditto... Well, let's try to develop a little this point..
The Individual I AM , in Spiritual Science, is the core of the
Human Being . Only the I AM can say "I" to Himself.
Such an I AM develops himself working over the astral body, ether
body, physical body, transforming them via different span of
times, So inside a weltanschauung that depicts the I AM as the
center of this work NO RACISM IS POSSIBLE.

Only particular incarnations and specific embodiments And what
"particular incarnations" are , but the subsequent
stages of an "I AM " evolution life after life ?. If
someone agrees, as PS does, that the I AM is the core of the
human beings there is no actual further chance anymore to call
"racist" Spiritual Science.

BTW : A racist is a guy who is unable to grasp
the I AM that, at a particular moment in time, can manifest Himself
via the sheats of an American or an European and so on . The
racist is someone compelled to judge "the book by the cover".
since he is able to see only what he thinks the "cover"
is! Ergo: Since Anthroposophy is based on the fact of "reading
the book" and not "to judge the cover" the racist,
able to see only "the cover" is out of her paths.

There was nothing wrong with the passages
you quoted; of course they expressed what Steiner had in mind.

Okay, so we agree that what Steiner says in the texts I quoted
is that individual souls undergo a process of self-improvement
via successive incarnations in ever higher racial and ethnic
forms, eventually moving toward a perfected human type. In his
account, race development is tightly correlated to soul development;
as souls become better, they incarnate in more advanced races
and peoples. Lower races and peoples gradually die out as the
mass of souls moves upward toward perfection, thus requiring
more perfected bodies to house them. Souls that fail to develop
themselves in a progressive fashion (by rejecting Christ, for
instance) incarnate in lower racial and ethnic forms; Steiner
names Chinese and Jews as examples. These backward peoples and
races still have a residual function, as long as there are less
developed souls that need to incarnate in declining and decadent
racial and ethnic forms. Meanwhile, small select racial and ethnic
groups continue their development upward in order to host those
souls that are advancing spiritually and approaching the ideal
human type. Is that an accurate summary, in your view?

In reply to my observation that there is no such thing as going
forward or backward in evolution, you wrote:

Perhaps you should write your own evolutionary
theory and see how well it catches on.

A very large number of contemporary evolutionary theorists already
agree with "my" theory, Tarjei. It is one of the dominant
approaches within the field. I recommend consulting the work
of Stephen Jay Gould, Ernst Mayr, Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin,
Ruth Hubbard, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Richard Levins, among others.

No Peter, we do not agree on what Steiner
taught about evolution, racial or otherwise, for the simple reason
that you deny the influence of the spiritual world in this context.

Don't be silly. Far from denying this, I emphasize that in Steiner's
eyes the influence of the spiritual world on racial identity
is crucial. That is exactly what makes his doctrine racist, in
my view.

You also deny that evolution involves any progress whatsoever,
backwards or forwards.

Yes, indeed I do. That has nothing whatsoever to do with whether
you and I agree about what Steiner taught. We both agree that
Steiner believed that evolution is progressive.

Last, when I said that it would make more sense for you to explain
why you think the ideology of higher races and lower races etc.
is not racist, you wrote:

I don't think the gods are racists.

So what? The question was simply: do you think that the idea
of higher and lower races and advanced and backward races and
so forth is racist? Try to keep in mind that you're speaking
for yourself here, not for the gods.

Before we proceed further into discussion
there are a few points I would like clear up. Before that , however,
a few words regarding your comment to Tarjei about discussion.
The word discussion is a broad term. It could include slicing
up the other's comments and responding singly with agreement,
disagreement, and sarcasm. I would prefer that you embrace the
concept of dialogue, however. And I would like to define it.
Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people in which
all participants subscribe to a common discipline. That discipline
is characterized by a quality of openness. That is, all participants
are open to the ideas of others and show a willingness to have
their opinion altered in some way. The dialogue thereby inheres
a spirit of social ecology. It is a noncombative, non-polemic
enterprise. Anyone who violates this in the dialogue invites
verbal war; when this happens dialogue is finished. Although
I think you likely prefer polemic, I also think that you can
probably find meaning in that polemic is basically warlike in
its tendency. Care to respond?

Before my altruism got the better of me, I
had decided not to enter into further discussion with you because
it seemed that you either did not understand or were not interested
in dialogue as I described it. To wit, and that not withstanding,
I jump in again...In your response to my last post, and I paraphrase,
you stated you did not think that at any one time in history
any culture could exist that was more advanced than the other's.
This goes against a basic understanding of evolution. Now I wonder
if you agree with evolution. Do you? What is your understanding
of evolution? If several cultures exist and only one of them
has discovered the wheel then are they all at the same level,
or just different? Do you believe in the concept of advancement?
I do think that certain things are advanced over others. For
example, in the evolutionary sequence of musical instruments,
the sitar is more advanced than the banjo although both are related
to the same primal instrument. Now, this judgment is based on
my recognition that the sitar is capable of more scales and therefore
more musical moods are possible than with the banjo. This has
to do with the idea of movable frets. Now recognize this as only
one way to judge it. I might recognize this but actually prefer
the banjo because I like the particular mood it offers. I like
the exhilarating feeling of the banjo that moves me to stomp
my feet, clap my hands and holler. It is also clear to me that
the sitar offers more subtleties of tone and interval; the sitar
offers the potential of exploring more complex musical idioms.
I think that the human body is the instrument of the human spirit.
Human bodies are of course different and part of that is due
to heredity. I do not have the same sort of body that J. S. Bach
had, nor his genius for that matter. I believe that genius is
in the province of spirit. My body does have, however, gifts
and limitations which I can utilize, overcome, or transform by
virtue of my enterprising spirit. This spirit is activated through
self-knowledge. Through self-knowledge I recognize that which
I must overcome. That may mean overcoming a "tin ear".
My wife achieved this through a love of music and six or seven
years hard work. The woman who could not sing in a choir or ensemble
because of her problems staying on pitch developed a beautiful
mezzo soprano voice who brought true musical enjoyment to her
listeners. She encountered along her way someone who almost killed
her enthusiasm. She took a course in the music department of
a local university and the teacher informed her one afternoon
that she had no business taking such a course because she did
not to have the talent to do it justice. Then she was lucky enough
to find a teacher who understood her problem and helped her overcome
it. The first teacher I liken to a racist who sees the person
as limited by his or her lack and attributes it to heredity and
thereby passes judgment on the person. Another person may see
a limitation but look through it to the individual. The person
may note that the limitation is due to heredity and yet trust
in the genius of the individual to overcome it. This person is
not in my estimation, a racist. So, I ask you, is noting differences
between peoples or cultures, racist? Is seeing that cultures,
through time, bring humanity to higher and higher stages of development,
racist? I await your response. Please respond to all of my questions
and not just the ones that further your argument.

The word discussion is a broad term. It could include slicing
up the other's comments and responding singly with agreement,
disagreement, and sarcasm. I would prefer that you embrace the
concept of dialogue, however. And I would like to define it.
Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people in which
all participants subscribe to a common discipline.

I don't think that's possible here. Several listmates are beholden
to ideas about public dialogue that I consider puerile, and they
are evidently baffled by my approach to public dialogue. Hence
I think there is little point in trying to come to a common understanding
of the proper framework; it makes more sense to me to try to
work around these procedural differences of opinion by focusing
on the substantive issues at stake.

That discipline is characterized by a quality of openness.
That is, all participants are open to the ideas of others and
show a willingness to have their opinion altered in some way.

It is very easy to alter my opinion. Just present a persuasive
argument and provide some evidence for it.

In your response to my last post, and I paraphrase, you stated
you did not think that at any one time in history any culture
could exist that was more advanced than the other's.

That's basically correct.

This goes
against a basic understanding of evolution.

No, it doesn't. Evolution is about plants, animals, and so forth.
Cultures are fundamentally different things.

Now I wonder if you agree with evolution.

Yes. It largely operates by natural selection, a mostly random
process that is not progressive and has no goal. None of this
has anything to do with cultures.

If several cultures exist and only one of them has discovered
the wheel then are they all at the same level, or just different?

They are plainly different. As for the question of levels, level
of what? Level of wheel-making prowess? Yes, in that regard they
are different.

Do you believe in the concept of advancement?

Yes. I hope that certain teams will advance in the semi-finals,
for example. What does this have to do with either natural evolution
or cultural differences?

I do think that certain things are advanced over others.

So do I. Not cultures, though. But this is all beside the point.
The question at issue is simply, do you think that certain races
are advanced over others? Please answer that question.

I think that the human body is the instrument of the human
spirit.

Okay. Do you think that the particular race in which a given
human body appears is the expression of the spiritual level of
the soul that it houses?

The first teacher I liken to a racist who sees the person
as limited by his or her lack and attributes it to heredity and
thereby passes judgment on the person.

I think that is beside the point. This is a foolish way of avoiding
the broader meaning of the term 'racism'.

The person may note that the limitation is due to heredity
and yet trust in the genius of the individual to overcome it.

The belief that particular spiritual or mental limitations are
due to race is racist, regardless of one's thoughts on their
possible overcoming.

This person is not in my estimation, a racist.

Yep, that's the problem.

So, I ask you, is noting differences between peoples or cultures,
racist?

Only if you say that the differences are ranked in order from
lower to higher and are directly tied to race. As soon as you
say that, then yes, this belief is obviously racist.

Is seeing that cultures, through time, bring humanity to higher
and higher stages of development, racist?

Only if you say that these lower and higher stages are directly
correlated to particular racial groups. As soon as you say that,
then yes, this belief is obviously racist.

You spend so much energy trying to convince
Anthroposophists that they believe in a racist cosmology

I think it's the other way around. Anthroposophists spend a lot
of energy trying to convince me that they really do believe in
Steiner's cosmology, and that they disagree that elements of
this cosmology are racist. This simply makes them poor judges
of racism in my eyes.

when you could instead be going after those groups who are
truly andproudly racist.

But I think that portions of anthroposophy are truly racist,
and a number of anthroposophists seem rather proud of these very
portions.

Why create enemies to fight with when there are so many real
ones out there.

My real enemies are ideas, not people. I realize that some of
you can't tell the difference, and I have no good ideas on what
to do about that.

The entire notion that some racial and
ethnic groups are "more backward" than others, as Steiner
says in the snippet on the Aryan myth that you posted today,
is patently racist. If you disagree, you just need to provide
a non-racist account of the notion of backward races and lower
racial forms and so forth.

That is beside the point. The individual
I Am is not and cannot be the object of racist thinking. Only
particular incarnations and specific embodiments can be the object
of racist thinking.

Bradford comments;

Well there you have it, as Andrea indicated
and you agree, "The individual I AM is not and cannot be
the object of racist thinking". Spiritual Science is I AM
core history and I AM core education, with a full focus on I
AM development and therefore cannot be racist. We finally agree
100%

Now to update you on progressive and retrogressive
or as planets sometimes do, go retrograde there was a distinct
difference in how the Atlanteans viewed those who failed to see
the gods, and had lost their atavistic dream participation, as
really the new retards.

Let us look at what the issue was. The issue
during and just after Atlantis was the shift from atavistic and
ancient unconscious clairvoyance and the shift to new Science
based cognition of Nature. The Retards in this case had two sides
of exclusion. One. The old forces had remaining antavistic clairvoyance
and the new, rejected group, didn't have that, and they were
considered outcasts, different, lacking in someway.

Steiner presents this several different ways.
Progressive were those who suddenly no longer had atavistic clairvoyance.
They were treated as people who were different and stunted, yet
that was to be the future shift of cogniton onto physical, five
sense observation of the physical plane. Previous Charkras, and
wheels, as well as "Altered State" mushrooms.. a no
go.

Now today, we catch up on the curve around,
that leads us back to conscious cognition of the Spiritual World.
This gathered conscious Cognition loses old traces of atavistic
clairvoyance and gains Exact Senorial Observation coupled with
rebuilding consciously new Spiritual Cognition and recharging,
the Charkras in a totally new way.

The curve of being embedded in the godhead
of divine revelation, hanging back in the divine, and those who
lost the ancient dominating vision of the gods, shifted to the
clarity of the physical plane, eventually leads Aristotle upwards
through the Sciences. These Sciences are the dead point before
the new upward tendency begins. Atlanteans still retained ancient
clairvoyance, the move with Manu to the Gobi desert brought a
school of beginning to ground humanity on the physical plane.

After the Christ event and in very highlighted
Specific, and historically earth shattering force, The Michael
School begins the public training to regain the gods, not atatvistically,
but consciously. You, are still ignorant of the process of I
AM history, so presently you are behaving in a retarded thinking
direction.

The problem here is not races at all. The
problem here is that the advanced, merely seeing the physical
plane sense bound group were considered retarded by the clairvoyant
ancient Atlanteans. They were indicators of the future and Manu
developed the first school to train the cognition to the physical
plane, with full knowledge that the lifting of the entire ecological
and moral framework of human evolution would require full consciousness
of the physical plane and a new form of thinking.

R.S.

"In the latter Atlantean
time men were different one from another, some having retained
a high degree of clairvoyant ability. This faculty did not vanish
suddenly, but was still present in many of the men who took part
in the great migration from west to east. In others, however,
it had already disappeared. There were advanced persons and retarded
persons and, in accordance with the whole nature of evolution
at that time, we can understand that the least advanced were
those who were the most clairvoyant, for in a certain way they
had remained stationary and had preserved the old Atlantean character.
The most advanced were those who had already achieved a physical
perceiving of the world, thus approaching our form of day-consciousness.
It was they who, ceased to see the spiritual world clairvoyantly
at night, and who during their waking hours saw objects with
sharper contours. That little handful of whom we have already
spoken, who were led by the greatest initiate (generally known
as Manu*) and his pupils deep into Asia and thence fructified
the other cultures, just this handful, being composed of the
most advanced men of that time, first lost the ancient gift of
clairvoyance for the ordinary relationships of life. For them
the true day-consciousness, in which we see physical objects
sharply contoured, became ever clearer. "

The Individual I AM , in Spiritual Science, is the core of
the Human Being . Only the I AM can say "I" to Himself.
Such an I AM develops himself working over the astral body, ether
body, physical body, transforming them via different span of
times, So inside a weltanschauung that depicts the I AM as the
center of this work NO RACISM IS POSSIBLE.

Well, that would certainly explain why you're having trouble
recognizing the racist aspects of Steiner's teachings: you've
decided a priori that these aspects cannot possibly exist. This
is a foolish way of approaching the matter, in my view.

And what "particular incarnations" are , but the
subsequent stages of an "I AM " evolution life after
life ?. If someone agrees, as PS does, that the I AM is the core
of the human beings there is no actual further chance anymore
to call "racist" Spiritual Science.

Why not? A theory of soul development that is linked directly
to racial development and slots specific racial groups into categories
of higher and lower, advanced and backward, and states that spiritual
characteristics determine which race a given soul will incarnate
into, qualifies as racist. Racism is a set of ideas about race.
It is not a set of ideas about the core of the human being.

A racist is a guy who is unable to grasp the I AM that, at
a particular moment in time, can manifest Himself via the sheats
of an American or an European and so on .The racist is someone
compelled to judge "the book by the cover". since he
is able to see only what he thinks the "cover" is!

That is true of some racists. But a racist is also a guy who
says that certain races are higher than others, are more advanced
than others, are more spiritually developed than others. If you
disagree, just explain how any non-racist could endorse the notion
of higher and lower races.

Spiritual Science is I AM core history and I AM core education,
with a full focus on I AM development and therefore cannot be
racist.

That is a non sequitur. The word "therefore" makes
no sense in your sentence above. You may as well say that the
ideology of the White Man's Burden was focused on improving the
lot of poor unfortunate colored folk and therefore could not
be racist. Anthroposophy is indeed a theory of I AM development,
of soul development, of the evolution of the I. Anthroposophy
is also a theory of racial development, of racial evolution,
of the evolution of ever higher racial and ethnic forms. These
latter aspects of anthroposophy are racist, in the sense that
many people understand the term. A theory that sorts different
racial groups into different spiritual categories, and designates
some racial groups as retarded and others as progressive, counts
as racist.

There you go again! Calling my listmates "puerile"
and pretending to make fun of Mr. Hardrop. You are saying that
you only want to deal with the substantive issues at stake. I
do not think whether or not someone is puerile or needs to be
poked fun at is substantive. If you're not going to follow my
lead to engage in dialogue, the least you can do it is to be
civil. I don't care how you act towards others but I do care
how you respond to me. It does nothing for your argument and
in fact detracts when you say, "This is a foolish way of
avoiding the broader meaning of the term 'racism'." What
broader meaning of the term "racism" am I avoiding
when I say that someone who judges another on the basis of his
heredity is racist?

If I understand you rightly, evolution is
only pertinent as a concept for minerals, plants, and animals,
in other words, the natural world. So, you are not including
human beings, am I right? It seems to follow therefore that you
do not believe in the evolution of ideas and that certainly one
idea is not more advanced than another. So, what's all this fuss
over your idea about Steiner and racism? This of course seems
absurd that one idea is not more advanced than another and I
do not really think that you believe this but logic dictates
that I ask you, "are you being consistent in your thinking?"
Are you saying that being racist is not necessarily a bad thing?
Are you implying that the word racist should have no sting? Whether
or not racism is immoral is the question! Of course, it is. The
problem is that we are not facing that question in this discussion.
And this is the issue that keeps being shouted towards you from
the rooftops of most members of this list. If you practice what
anthroposophy teaches, you train yourself to look at the spiritual
striving of the individual and not at the color of his skin.
In the third lecture of The Spiritual Foundations of Morality
-- you quote from the second lecture -- we find the statement
"progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal
love, but by the extension of our interests further and further,
so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with
widely different characters, racial and a national peculiarities,
with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing
religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding.
Right interests, right understanding, calls forth from the soul
the right moral action." With regard to the issue of racism,
the acid test for a teaching should be what does it calls forth
from its practitioners, not is this or that comment taken out
of context, racist. So, against today's modern moral climate,
why are you pursuing this line of thinking? I can think of no
other reason than that you think that these ideas will generate
racist action. In effect, you are working against a teaching
that opposes separatist, nationalist, and racist action. Are
you afraid to go after the real racists?

Now you asked me a direct question and I will
answer. You asked, "The question at issue is simply, do
you think that certain races are advanced over others?"
And I answer, "No." In our time, race is no longer
important. It hasn't been since the exodus out of Atlantis. Since
the migrations, cultures have carried the evolution of humanity.
Tribes and races have intermingled. There is no Indian race.
There is no Egyptian race. There is no Greek race. All of these
cultures have resulted from peoples who met and interacted in
a protected geographical region guided by spiritual beings. Of
course heredity was active but more important was the archangelic
guidance. Culture is largely a spiritual phenomenon, but it too
evolves and invariably crosses familial, tribal, communal and
racial lines.

The word discussion is a broad term. It
could include slicing up the other's comments and responding
singly with agreement, disagreement, and sarcasm. I would prefer
that you embrace the concept of dialogue, however. And I would
like to define it. Dialogue is a conversation between two or
more people in which all participants subscribe to a common discipline.

I don't think that's possible here. Several
listmates are beholden to ideas about public dialogue that I
consider puerile, and they are evidently baffled by my approach
to public dialogue. Hence I think there is little point in trying
to come to a common understanding of the proper framework; it
makes more sense to me to try to work around these procedural
differences of opinion by focusing on the substantive issues
at stake.

That discipline is characterized by a quality
of openness. That is, all participants are open to the ideas
of others and show a willingness to have their opinion altered
in some way.

It is very easy to alter my opinion. Just
present a persuasive argument and provide some evidence for it.

In your response to my last post, and I
paraphrase, you stated you did not think that at any one time
in history any culture could exist that was more advanced than
the other's.

That's basically correct.

This goes against a basic understanding
of evolution.

No, it doesn't. Evolution is about plants,
animals, and so forth. Cultures are fundamentally different things.

Now I wonder if you agree with evolution.

Yes. It largely operates by natural selection,
a mostly random process that is not progressive and has no goal.
None of this has anything to do with cultures.

If several cultures exist and only one
of them has discovered the wheel then are they all at the same
level, or just different?

They are plainly different. As for the
question of levels, level of what? Level of wheel-making prowess?
Yes, in that regard they are different.

Do you believe in the concept of advancement?

Yes. I hope that certain teams will advance
in the semi-finals, for example. What does this have to do with
either natural evolution or cultural differences?

I do think that certain things are advanced
over others.

So do I. Not cultures, though. But this
is all beside the point. The question at issue is simply, do
you think that certain races are advanced over others? Please
answer that question.

I think that the human body is the instrument
of the human spirit.

Okay. Do you think that the particular
race in which a given human body appears is the expression of
the spiritual level of the soul that it houses?

The first teacher I liken to a racist who
sees the person as limited by his or her lack and attributes
it to heredity and thereby passes judgment on the person.

I think that is beside the point. This
is a foolish way of avoiding the broader meaning of the term
'racism'.

The person may note that the limitation
is due to heredity and yet trust in the genius of the individual
to overcome it.

The belief that particular spiritual or
mental limitations are due to race is racist, regardless of one's
thoughts on their possible overcoming.

This person is not in my estimation, a
racist.

Yep, that's the problem.

So, I ask you, is noting differences between
peoples or cultures, racist?

Only if you say that the differences are
ranked in order from lower to higher and are directly tied to
race. As soon as you say that, then yes, this belief is obviously
racist.

Is seeing that cultures, through time,
bring humanity to higher and higher stages of development, racist?

Only if you say that these lower and higher
stages are directly correlated to particular racial groups. As
soon as you say that, then yes, this belief is obviously racist.

A theory that sorts different racial groups
into different spiritual categories, and designates some racial
groups as retarded and others as progressive, counts as racist.

Peter, part of me wants to say, 'just shut
up, will ya'. Jesus. I mean this is just too much misunderstanding
for the normal human being. Seriously. You keep beating this
dead dog over and over and over and you are fixiated on a thing
that has no bearing in reality to Dr. Steiners teachings. Stunning.

Anthroposophy is indeed a theory of I AM
development, of soul development, of the evolution of the I.

Peter

Bradford comments;

Well there you have it, as Andrea indicated
and you agree, "The individual I AM is not and cannot be
the object of racist thinking". Spiritual Science is I AM
core history and I AM core education, with a full focus on I
AM development and therefore cannot be racist. We finally agree
100%"

Well let me rephrase it for you. Spiritual
Science is I AM core history and I AM core education, with a
full focus on I AM development, and, therefore, Spiritual Science
cannot be racist.

Now that was well worth the endless wrangling
over the issue. There is no one, there is no previous human being
who has ever devoted his entire body of research, some 6000 odd
texts, to understanding, unfolding and investigating the full
depth of the I AM in human history and science other than Rudolf
Steiner. Therefore Rudolf Steiner, as the first historical researcher
into the lofty immortality, earth history, and cultural development
of the I AM, and standing firmly on this I AM research, does
not present a Racist theory but an unfolding foundation of the
immortal I AM as it developed through Time and SPace, to the
present moment.

As far as your exposed Darwinian grasp of
disjointed half assed survival of the fittest, abstraction theory
as pointed out by Dottie; Pure 19th century stale nonsense. Does
Mankind, Do human beings have a lofty goal ahead of them that
brings Freedom back to the bosom of the Gods who gave birth to
the I AM, and did Steiner present the higher unfolding of human
capacities, Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man in logical
and current language? He did.

That is what the Gobi desert, Manu, Atlantis
and humanities chakras are about. Why are you strangely silent
about Chakras? Why so dumb on Angels and Archangels? Could it
be that you must cringe at all the accurate, medical, heart is
not a pump research, Etheric body and out of the body testimones
and related reality, science and history that is condensed in
Spiritual Science? Could it be that you are a person who thinks
the brain secretes thoughts like the liver secrets bile and that
indeed ideas and ideologies are the same for you as they were
for Hitler, digestive juices?

There is no way around the fact that failure
to understand Idealism, not ideologies as games, but inner idealism,
prevents your I AM from understanding brotherhood as anything
but abstract humanism. And I am very fond of humanism. The communion
of humanity with the Angelic world is constantly happening. It
happens even on this list because thinking has become consecration
of Living ideals. Here the Folk Souls lectures describe how each
human being has an Angelic Nurturing guide. The child in his
cradle knows this.

But for adult cognition, the Science of Angels,
their history and their relation to how the I AM is carried and
inserted into hereditary and karmic configurations is an advanced
Star Wisdom. Now, When Buddha graduated from Earthly Karma, he
no longer carried around his physical body. The achievement of
Buddha allowed Buddha's Angel to advance. Every human being who
progresses along the path of karma and higher education, eventually
frees their Angel. Buddha's Angel logically, and consistently
becaome an Archangel.

This progressive, individualized development
allowed the Archangel Michael to become the Archai Michael. Therefore,
above and within the I AM of the human being, the gods themselves
and each human Angel will advance and this would include the
goal of the Angelic Kingdom and the Human Kingdom, i.e. Brotherhood.

This is the Science that you have never understood
that moves from mineral, plant, animal, human, angel, archangel,
archai, kyriotetes, dynamis, Exusai-Serpahim, Cherubim and Thrones.
let us count them. Well what do you know 13. 13 at the Last Supper.
Arthur and his 12 knights. Bodhisattvas...but wait, America..
Pyramid with the I above the pyramid, tells us that 13 steps
to the top of the Eye. But wait, America had 13 colonies. But
wait the dollar is riddled with thirteen arrows.. so Even the
founding Fathers had more understanding in their big toes than
you have ever understood.

But Steiner didn't just present the rudiments,
he presented the details, the organized unfolding rhythm of human
development far into the future and back into the past of Ancient
Saturn. Insects, Planets, Solar System, Stars, matter, atomic
table... and Christ was master of all of them from having schooled,
as Jesus, all that has only briefly here been indicated.

Steiner was the first Historian, Scientist
and Prophet of the I AM in the twentieth century. There has been
nothing of the magnitude of Spiritual Science that has impacted
humanity, since the Vedas and Ancient India. This was not only
a gift to the West, but it stirred up the most fearsome retarding
Beings, and that is how the twentieth century got fouled in racism.

"I knew Jack Kennedy, and you are no
Jack Kennedy, Senator Quayle," I know Rudolf Steiner and
you Mr. Staudenmaier are no historian.

Okay, so we agree that what Steiner says
in the texts I quoted is that individual souls undergo a process
of self-improvement via successive incarnations in ever higher
racial and ethnic forms, eventually moving toward a perfected
human type.

No, we don't agree on anything in this field,
Peter. Nothing at all. Or if we do, you're not revealing it.
You miss entirely the effects Steiner is getting at when he talks
about incarnating "into different racial lineages".
You miss these effects because they are soul-spiritual. Your
paraphrasings and summaries don't match the quotes, because you're
not capable of reading such literature.

It is interesting to note that when quotes
you have selected are supplemented by other quotes in order to
clarify Steiner's views, you appear to be provoked by such supplementary
quotes.

Is that an accurate summary, in your view?

No.

A very large number of contemporary evolutionary
theorists already agree with "my" theory, Tarjei.

What is your theory of evolution? How did
human races originate? What happens to an evolution that does
not progress at all and does not move forwards or backwards?
Does it stand still, waiting for Judgment Day, like the creationists
say?

It is one of the dominant approaches within
the field. I recommend consulting the work of Stephen Jay Gould,
Ernst Mayr, Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin, Ruth Hubbard, Evelyn
Fox Keller, and Richard Levins, among others.

I'm convinced that you your invitations to
discuss evolution and races would meet much better responses
here if you would elaborate on your own theory with some enthusiasm
instead of repeating your twisted caricature of Anthroposophy.

Far from denying this, I emphasize that
in Steiner's eyes the influence of the spiritual world on racial
identity is crucial. That is exactly what makes his doctrine
racist, in my view.

What you try to emphasize is that racial identiry
itself is crucial to Anthroposophy, only spiced up with a little
spirituality.

do you think that the idea of higher and
lower races and advanced and backward races and so forth is racist?
Try to keep in mind that you're speaking for yourself here, not
for the gods.

It is not racist to understand that racial
forms disappear and are replaced by new ones and that this is
connected with progressive evolution. This is a view that recommends
race-mixing, integration, and assimilation and is therefore anti-racist.
See my article about Steiner, Christ, and Racial Intermarriage
at

The Individual I AM , in Spiritual Science,
is the core of the Human Being . Only the I AM can say "I"
to Himself. Such an I AM develops himself working over the astral
body, ether body, physical body, transforming them via different
span of times, So inside a weltanschauung that depicts the I
AM as the center of this work NO RACISM IS POSSIBLE.

Well, that would certainly explain why
you're having trouble recognizing the racist aspects of Steiner's
teachings:

Troubles ? The only troubles here are your obsession about it,

you've decided a priori

This is not an "a priori". It is a result of an EXPERIENCE
of the wholeness of RS's inisghts.. This explains well, on the
contrary, that you don't grasp actually nothing (or you don't
WANT to grasp) nothing of Spiritual Science.

This is a foolish way of approaching the matter, in my view.

The only foolish thing here is your approach to the matter since
you lost from the beginning the core of the object of your "research".

And what "particular incarnations"
are , but the subsequent stages of an "I AM " evolution
life after life ?. If someone agrees, as PS does, that the I
AM is the core of the human beings there is no actual further
chance anymore to call "racist" Spiritual Science.

A theory of soul development

It' s not a "soul development".
It's a development of I AM (Spirit) Astral Body (Soul) Ether-Physical
(Body) you have not the tiniest idea of what you re talking about.

that is linked directly to racial development and slots specific
racial groups

Your usual twitsing of concepts. It is not a "direct"
link but is the choice of a "dress" for a spiritual
experience on Earth.

Again: today it's impossible to judge in advance
by the "dress" an human being. (racist attitude) In
Spiritual Scienve any rigid determinism is out of place. Yaaawnnn......

On and On you seem to mistake RS's insights
with Evola's one !

into categories of higher and lower, advanced and backward,

Oh the point! you are obsessed by the differences among human
beings and call "racist" any of them!

qualifies as racist. Racism is a set of ideas about race.
It is not a set of ideas about the core of the human being.

A racist is a guy who is unable to grasp
the I AM that, at a particular moment in time, manifest Himself
via the sheats of an American or an European and so on .The racist
is someone compelled to judge "the book by the cover".
since he is able to see only what he thinks the "cover"
is!

That is true of some racists. But a racist
is also a guy who says that certain races are higher than others,
are more advanced than others, are more spiritually developed
than others

This bullshit, again ! Yaaawn. Well let's summarize:

1) The core of Spiritual Science is the "I
AM " teaching . (No racism here, as you said)
2) Today there is no "spiritual race" anymore. There
are only individuals who lives in different community of languages
(nations) The "races" are fading away
3) . The picture that Steiner gives us for the future development
of Mankind have nothing to do with the "racial" insights
of past times cultures but are depicting a possible full spiritualization
of Mnkind and Earth.
4) In Spiritual Science there are no racial prejudices since
the core of Steiner's teachings is about the link between single
"I AM" and single "I AM" (in this case it
can be said "soul-spirit")

I should carry it on for an hour . but , yaaawn....:

If you disagree, just explain how any non-racist could endorse
the notion of higher and lower races.

And having said the above the consequence is that the notion
of higher and lower "races" is out of Spiritual Science.

So you will not agree and I don't care ,,,,,,OH : WHY AM I SO
STUPID TO WASTE MY PRECIOUS TIME DISCUSSING WITH A BROKEN RECORD????????????

The Individual I AM , in Spiritual Science,
is the core of the Human Being . Only the I AM can say "I"
to Himself. Such an I AM develops himself working over the astral
body, ether body, physical body, transforming them via different
span of times, So inside a weltanschauung that depicts the I
AM as the center of this work NO RACISM IS POSSIBLE.

Well, that would certainly explain why
you're having trouble recognizing the racist aspects of Steiner's
teachings: you've decided a priori that these aspects cannot
possibly exist. This is a foolish way of approaching the matter,
in my view.

Dear Peter:

We must speak a little further of the "I-AM",
and warn of wolves that prowl in thought.

Racism does not admit of aspects, but is rather
a statement of an underlying intent to exalt some and demean
others. Failing conspicuous telltale evidence of such intent
within the life of an individual, there is no hope that any campaign
or crusade, however ferocious or subtle, however penetrating
or enchanging, which would be capable of getting to first base
in attempt either indict or exonerate an individual of such a
label. For it is not written, "By their deductions",
but rather "By their fruits ye will know them" This
is the standard, whether it pleases or insults you, that in the
estimation of the Christ, who has a slight possibility of knowing
more than a Ph.D., it is possible to define and defend the Human
path through the bard's voice, as in "my brain I'll prove
the female to my soul" (Richard II). The rest's but footnote,
embroidery, encore, maraschino cherry, yet I'll hammer it out,
(what are friends for?)

Racism, I think it could fairly be said is
one of the tragic echoes of a behavior which promulgates an intent
to harbor twin prejudices of privilege and malice, and to project
these upon group membership. The imagined entitlement or the
exclusion of entitlement, based upon the tenacious, atavistic,
Neanderthal-like clinging to criteria of human identity focused
through externally-definable criteria, characterizes what one
can come to regard as "template thinking", a term I
substitute as more creative and expansive a depiction of what
others might refer to as dogmatic or parochial behavior, also
known in rude circles in America as "Redneck".

Now the real question Peter S "must"
answer, like everyone who will soon be left, as my friend Cornman
once said, "standing on what he's standing for", :
) , is one he will ask in front of the mirror, as he checks,
like a 500 year-old Dracula before him to see if there is anything
which reflects at all in it, is this: ..............whether he
wishes to regard himself for the rest of this reincarnation as
a person who insists that identity is only to be focused, pursued
and defined by the widely accepted though utterly futile resort
to non-phenemonologically, (i.e., non-self-evidencing) verifiable
forms of reflective experience, or.............. whether he will
invite himself to indulge the notion of seeking to dissolve henceforth
from the house arrest of racial, tribal, national and ethnic
identity, and so come to see such mercurial parole from these
long-standing curses as something unspeculative, worth cherishing,
embracing and championing. This is the stuff of which decisions
"to die for" are made on. Not to answer too soon, with
prepared press-releases and syndicated reruns, for you are in
front of your own mirror.

The most fundamental contribution of Rudolf
Steiner was to impart an understanding of the Anthroposophical
world view as progressive in attitude, rather than paralyzed
by obsession with defining and living within the psychologically
myopic confines of a freeze-framed reality, from static, non-mysterious,
brass-like, dictionary forms of identity.

Because of the evolve-ability, the re-thinkability
of ideas and purposes, magnetisms and currents of spiritual influence
which have in ages past, played significant roles in conferring,
belief infrastructures and purpose to people when forces of individuation
had not progressed as far as they have now, now may be understood
to be on the wane and are losing hold as determinants of aspiration.

Throughout the near and in the upstream of
the more legendary domains of the sweep of history, when the
racial garb, the clothing of the biological basis for life held
far greater sway than it does now, initiates and sages have nonetheless
regarded race and tribe and nation as gloves, beneath which is
the Invisible Hand of God. And so these are ever mere epicenter
of Divine purposes and the Hierarchies which sire those lofty
intents, through which they revealed and matured genius, talents
and capacities within groups through instinctive, less conscious,
less independent, focusing in more stereotypic rather than in
what can be regarded as "lone and maverick'd" ways,
those self-initiated impulses we see and affirm as appropriate
for the present.

The danger, the tar-pit into which you persist
it is necessary to continue sinking is reversible by developing
an interest in the balance between beauty and criticism, that
through such pursuit of equilibrium you can evolve the gift of
individuality, which is but promise which only choice can fructify.
So how to become a species unto oneself; this honor comes about
through the forging of courage to break through the cocoon of
the collective and become an author of influences out of the
"I-AM." This is the esoteric meaning of pulling Excalibur
from the sheath of one's own Stone. Just as religion is to group
identity as the emerging ability, the "artistic license"
to reveal and perfect the work of art is to the individual, so
also, whoever wishes to define his own conscious access by self-emancipating
from "Template Thinking", will regard intuition as
an antidote to spin and all prejudice, and see in its inspired
cultivation the single sine-qua-non fundamental to the core and
living essence of Anthroposophia.

To remain mired, seeking strength of your
own self-definition by resort to agitating sympathy and antipathy
in others, squanders valuable energy which could, pending spiritual
maturity, be spent in blessing and empowering others to focus
their attention towards the liberation of men from the blind
slavery of nationalism, racism, and every "ISM". For
slowly it becomes clear that the "Anything-ISM" stereotype
is a pathology which fractures the One Human Race into kingdoms
of turf-bound claustrophobia, and makes competition a euphoria,
and is the primary campaign contributor to what populates this
great stage with fools. "Then we must labor to destroy the
animal condition, til the true meaning of humanity come to light"

Good luck on opening the cover and reading
your own book. May your for-and-against, black-and-white hot-and-cold
running Zebra stripes all turn to Joseph's coat of many rainbows............

Warm Regards,
Abraham Van Helsing

"Music is the one incorporeal
entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends
mankind, but mankind cannot comprehend."
Ludwig van Beethoven

We must speak a little further of the "I-AM",
and warn of wolves that prowl in thought.

Dearest Harvey, you are the most beautiful
heart mind I have ever met or even hope to meet in this lifetime.
Truly your words are a consistant study of pulling ones self
up from the bootstraps of humanity to its counterpart in the
spiritual worlds.

Racism does not admit of aspects, but is
rather a statement of an underlying intent to exalt some and
demean others. Failing conspicuous telltale evidence of such
intent within the life of an individual, there is no hope that
any campaign or crusade, however ferocious or subtle, however
penetrating or enchanging, which would be capable of getting
to first base in attempt either indict or exonerate an individual
of such a label. For it is not written, "By their deductions",
but rather "By their fruits ye will know them" This
is the standard, whether it pleases or insults you, that in the
estimation of the Christ, who has a slight possibility of knowing
more than a Ph.D., it is possible to define and defend the Human
path through the bard's voice, as in "my brain I'll prove
the female to my soul" (Richard II). The rest's but footnote,
embroidery, encore, maraschino cherry, yet I'll hammer it out,
(what are friends for?)

There you go again! Calling my listmates "puerile"
and pretending to make fun of Mr. Hardrop.

I didn't call our listmates puerile, I said that some of them
are beholden to ideas about public discourse that I consider
puerile. One good example is the refusal to distinguish people
from ideas.

You are saying that you only want to deal with the substantive
issues at stake.

That would be nice, don't you think? There's lots of Steiner
texts we could be discussing. I say let's get on with it.

What broader meaning of the term "racism" am I avoiding
when I say that someone who judges another on the basis of his
heredity is racist?

The broader meaning of the term racism which recoginizes that
judging another on the basis of heredity is only one among many
varieties of racist thinking. Another variety is the insistence
on classifying some races as higher and others as lower. You
don't seem particularly interested in discussing that variety.
Why not?

If I understand you rightly, evolution is only pertinent as
a concept for minerals, plants, and animals, in other words,
the natural world.

That is what the term 'evolution' generally refers to in a biological
context. Do you disagree?

So, you are not including human beings, am I right?

No, you are not right. Human beings are part of the natural world
and one of the products of natural evolution, in my view.

It seems to follow therefore that you do not believe in the
evolution of ideas and that certainly one idea is not more advanced
than another.

I do believe in the evolution of ideas. This has nothing at all
to do with natural evolution. They are fundamentally different
things.

So, what's all this fuss over your idea about Steiner and
racism?

Beats me. I was hoping maybe one of you could explain that. For
some reason a lot of you get very upset when other people read
about racial missions, racial souls, eugenics, higher and lower
races, and conclude that these ideas are racist.

This of course seems absurd that one idea is not more advanced
than another

What does that have to do with one race being more advanced than
another?

Are you saying that being racist is not necessarily a bad
thing?

Obviously it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Lots of racists were
and are proud of their racism. I think that racism is always
a bad thing, but racists themselves often disagree.

Are you implying that the word racist should have no sting?

Whether it has a sting depends entirely on one's own attitude
toward racism.

Whether or not racism is immoral is the question!

No, it isn't. Whether or not some of Steiner's doctrines are
racist is the question. The question of morality is separate.
There are people who like some of Steiner's doctrines precisely
because of their racist character.

So, against today's modern moral climate, why are you pursuing
this line of thinking? I can think of no other reason than that
you think that these ideas will generate racist action.

No, that isn't what worries me (though it's not a far-fetched
possibility). My focus is on racist ideology.

Are you afraid to go after the real racists?

Most of my research is on Nazis and their predecessors. I trust
they meet your standard of "real racists". The problem
here, from my point of view, is that your standard is wrong.
People who believe in higher and lower races, advanced and backward
races, are real racists. If you disagree, please explain why.

Now you asked me a direct question and I will answer. You
asked, "The question at issue is simply, do you think that
certain races are advanced over others?" And I answer, "No."

Great. So you disagree with Steiner on that one. Or maybe you
think Steiner didn't really mean all that stuff about more advanced
races?

In our time, race is no longer important. It hasn't been since
the exodus out of Atlantis.

Are you trying to say that you think some races were more advanced
than others in the past? Which ones?

Well let me rephrase it for you. Spiritual
Science is I AM core history and I AM core education, with a
full focus on I AM development, and, therefore, Spiritual Science
cannot be racist.

That is an obvious non-sequitur, Bradford, as I pointed out yesterday.
The "therefore" is nonsensical, because the premise
and the conclusion have nothing to do with one another. If somebody
writes, "spiritual science is about epistemology and esotericism
and, therefore, spiritual science cannot be racist", competent
readers will laugh at this. If you want to know what other people
think is racist about Steiner's doctrines, you'll have to take
a look at his published works on race.

Hi Tarjei, you now say that you find something
inaccurate about my summary of Steiner's teachings on racial
evoltion. This is a reversal from your prior post, of course,
but we can set that aside if you like. Could you simply state
what you think was inaccurate in my summary? Thanks,

I recommend you re-read Steiner's extensive and repeated explanations
of the relationship between soul development and race development.
I quoted a number of them for you some time ago. You can find
that post here:

You also evidently disagree with my observation that a racist
is also a guy who says that certain races are higher than others,
are more advanced than others, are more spiritually developed
than others. You called this observation "bullshit".
I think this is the heart of our disagreement. You don't recognize
that such beliefs are racist in the first place.

Racism does not admit of aspects, but is rather a statement
of an underlying intent to exalt some and demean others.

I disagree. Racism is not a matter of intentions, it is a matter
of beliefs.

Racism, I think it could fairly be said is one of the tragic
echoes of a behavior which promulgates an intent to harbor twin
prejudices of privilege and malice, and to project these upon
group membership.

That is much too narrow a standard. By this logic, very many
historical racists would not qualify as racist.

You also evidently disagree with my observation that a racist
is also a guy who says that certain races are higher than others,
are more advanced than others, are more spiritually developed
than others.

Peter, i' ll tell it to you in the mildest possible way. I see
that we are running in circles.

Several listmates tried to explain to you
what Spiritual Science has to say about the topic that you twist
and pervert every line you are writing. I have no more time to
waste with you., really. I sdtmit to have also enjooyed this
ping pong bot now I'm really bothered.

So you can read Patrick's answer about it
, since I agree at all with him on this topic.
De hoc satis, Nyarlatothep.
(Beware of Prof: Scaccabarozzi, Mr Ward!)

Okay, so is it accurate to say that Andrea
and Patrick agree that it is not racist to say that certain races
are higher than others, are more advanced than others, are more
spiritually developed than others? Or am I twisting and perverting
someting or other again? I would be very interested in learning
what both of you actually think on this question. Thanks,

Peter

You also evidently disagree with my observation
that a racist is also a guy who says that certain races are higher
than others, are more advanced than others, are more spiritually
developed than others.

Peter, i' ll tell it to you in the mildest
possible way. I see that we are running in circles.

Several listmates tried to explain to you
what Spiritual Science has to say about the topic that you twist
and pervert every line you are writing. I have no more time to
waste with you., really. I sdtmit to have also enjooyed this
ping pong bot now I'm really bothered.

So you can read Patrick's answer about
it , since I agree at all with him on this topic.
De hoc satis,Nyarlatothep.
(Beware of Prof: Scaccabarozzi, Mr Ward!)

Hi Tarjei, you now say that you find something
inaccurate about my summary of Steiner's teachings on racial
evoltion. This is a reversal from your prior post, of course,
but we can set that aside if you like. Could you simply state
what you think was inaccurate in my summary?

The answer to that question depends upon
whether or not the yellow, red, brown and black races were "main
races" according to HPB.

Peter you are an idiot! Forward, retardation,
going backward, Oh what an unlearned child you are. Because Evolving
is seemingly forward it makes a nice term doesn't it? The condition
of retardation doesn't merely come from races... or races at
all. Retardation comes from Retarding beings. You are such a
retard.

Bradford this is just a shameful rant. What
is wrong with you people? Why doesn't somebody tell him to act
like a human being? This is garbage, this isn't "spirituality."

Anthroposophy is indeed a theory of I AM
development, of soul development, of the evolution of the I.

"The individual I AM is not and cannot
be the object of racist thinking".

Peter

Please enshrine these words above the Portal:
Quote of the Year!

Bradford comments;

Well there you have it, as Andrea indicated
and you agree, "The individual I AM is not and cannot be
the object of racist thinking". Spiritual Science is I AM
core history and I AM core education, with a full focus on I
AM development and therefore cannot be racist. We finally agree
100%"

Well let me rephrase it for you. Spiritual
Science is I AM core history and I AM core education, with a
full focus on I AM development, and, therefore, Spiritual Science
cannot be racist.

Now that was well worth the endless wrangling
over the issue.

Comments;

Well there is no other system of complete
I AM education other than Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science
and as Peter has said, I Am education, by it's very nature cannot
be considered Racist. We have a BINGO winner. You can write home
and call your friends, Peter has seen the light. Lets uncork
a few bottles and celebrate Peter's mighty Epiphany. Peter we
are proud of you for arriving at research that befits a human
being in the 21st century. Now lets work on those tics.

Now to add this momentus celebration we should
look directly into the area of kernel I AM development where
it appeared after Atlantis. This has always been a problem area
for Peter.

Steiner;

"Those other people who
had gone the farthest into Asia included a small company from
whom the divine spiritual world had withdrawn the most. In its
place they had acquired something else, something that had been
saved from the world, which had withdrawn into profoundest darkness
 this was the ego, or the "I am." They felt that
what was preserved within them as the "I am" was the
eternal core of their being, and that it had sprung from the
spiritual world; they felt all the forms they had previously
seen were like a sacred memory, and that their strength depended
upon this firm core which remained within them.

As yet they did not perceive
the ego in its complete form; this only came later, but those
who were the most advanced, who had descended most deeply, developed
a certain tendency which they might have expressed as follows:
What we have to treasure above all else is the consciousness
of our divinity, consciousness of that in which is to be found
the deepest memories of our soul. Even if this soul has forgotten
the divine beings which once it knew, we can find the way back
to them by looking within our own being  by being conscious
of our ego. In short, the consciousness of a formless God was
now evolved, a God who does not appear in outward form, but who
must be sought within man's innermost being. This conception,
which is a very old one, was transformed in the course of man's
further development into the commandment: Thou shalt not make
to thyself any graven image or likeness of thy God. "

Bradford comments;

Students of the Michael School, how clear
do we have to be? What Peter and most of us need to understand
is that several forms of Retardation and Insight were arising
in different peoples and cultures. Steiner indicates, that by
normal Atlantean standards, we could say that the Retards, were
used to create the basis for New Groups who could consolidate
this fundamental weakness.

This is part of the details of the Noah story
left undiscovered by our Biblical fables, revisionist and mythic
history; yet this weak new capacity reveals the closing, the
loss of ancient insights and the new capacity, the retarded capacity
to take hold of ones own memory, not racial memory. This weakened
memory was totally new and undeveloped. This weak and fragile
new capacity shatters Staudenmaier's particular autistic focus
on race and Advanced Race. Peter suffers from Asperger's Syndrome
when it comes to race.

Paying attention and thanking Peter for coming
to such a logical conclusion takes us back to amazing details,
that go all the way back to Paulina. Paulina had indicated exactly
what the problem was. The problem was that heredity and blood
line memory allowed someone in the Bible to claim they had living
memory all the way back several hundred, in some cases 5 to 900
year memory spans. Which they did. The had ancient group soul
memory and the Chinese had a natural capacity for this.

Those with group soul memory capacity were
strong tribal leaders. But I AM's were fashioning their own connections
to the spiritual worlds and were ostercized even from their own
tribes, because inwardly they had lost the old connections to
race and they were different.

Ancient memory and atavistic clairvoyance
connected souls to the group, their tribe, their blood and not
the newly dawning, and lonely, I AM capacity. It was those Atlantean
retards, a complete reversal of what Peter Staudenmaier imagines,
it was those who had lost the capacity for group soul memory
that were the foundation of the new advanced retards.

"Then there was a certain
small colony consisting of the most advanced men of the Atlantean
epoch who had settled near the Gobi desert. What kind of people
were these, and what do we mean when we say they were the "most
advanced?" It means those least able to see into the spiritual
world, for advancement consisted in their having proceeded from
the spiritual world and having entered into the physical world.
They were the people who felt constrained to say: "Formerly
we had connection with the spiritual world, but we have it no
longer." This loss filled their hearts with sorrow; they
longed for the spiritual world from which they had come and which
they valued more than that in which they now dwelt.

Conditions varied among the
different European populations. Under certain conditions many
could still see into the spiritual worlds. When the Mysteries
still existed in Europe, and Initiates  who through occult
development could rise in full consciousness to the spiritual
world  spoke of those worlds and of the beings dwelling
there, or of the varied parts men had to play after death; when
the initiates brought all this in mighty pictures before the
people by means of myth and legend, they found some who understood
them, for some still had vision.

The peculiar conditions of
life and of environment in ancient Europe caused even uninitiated
persons to experience the spiritual world. Though they could
not come in contact with the higher Gods they believed in the
spiritual worlds and trusted in them. These worlds were real
to them, hence they felt their humanity in a quite different
way from other peoples. Let us try to enter into the feelings
of these ancient Europeans.

They said: "I am indeed
connected with the Gods." Through consciousness of this
a strong sense of personality developed in them, a special sense
of the divine worth of the human personality, and, above all,
a strong sense of freedom. We must picture this state of feeling
vividly, for it was this consciousness of the personality which
the people of Europe took with them when they went south and
peopled the Grecian and Italian peninsulas.

We can note stragglers from
those who were possessed of this feeling, particularly among
the ancient Etruscans. Even in their art we can observe this
strong sense of freedom, for it had a spiritual foundation. Before
the rise of the true Roman kingdom there was an Etruscan population
in the Italian peninsula which had a high degree of freedom in
its system of government; on one hand it was somewhat hierarchical,
and, on the other, free in the highest sense. Each town made
provision for its own freedom, and an ancient Etruscan would
have felt any kind of confederacy, in our sense of the word,
as unbearable. Everything which passed southwards in the peninsula
as a sense of freedom, or a feeling for personality, sprang from
the causes we have mentioned. "

Bradford concludes;

Now if you study Spiritual Science you are
a victim of the Easter Mysteries. Those who study Spiritual Science
are Ostercized by the current hanger ons to Dead Science and
dialectical materialism. At one Time Dead Science was a path,
and to those who have managed to pass through this dead science
field, light must be earned to come through the tunnel to the
Christ Event with scientific certainty. Black Sheep and Students
of the Michael School are still Ostercized or Eastericized because
they are now the new little Noah group of retards of the expanding
I AM. The rest of humanity is in denial.

To peel away the layers, like an Onion, around
physical bodies, races, language and Archangelic influences,
and trace threads and migrations of peoples and observe their
inner changes, Steiner tackled rich, mature issues so that the
most precious issue of the Earth and the core issue of Spiritual
Science could be recorded, highlighted and traced towards the
Mid-Point of Logically developing Earth and humanity.

What Peter Staudenmaier thinks as natural
selection and mere biology was something different very different
when considered from the inner side of things. Souls that had
lost the common vision of the gods, became the retards that bore
the future.

What is happening right now, is that those
who work with and investigate with inner integrity, Science and
Spiritual Science combined, are now beginning to ascend back
into the Spiritual World with newly won Insights from their I
AM developments on Earth. Like Joan of Arc or Giordano Bruno,
their Ostercized awakenings create the karma of the new Michael
School. The problem that Peter has had is that this has nothing
to do with racial memory, bodily memory, but rather Spiritual
Intelligence meeting at the cross roads of the Consciousness
Soul. This is where the I AM is most alone like Hamlet between
motives he sees and intuition from the spiritual world, his dead
father.

Now we all know this is far beyond Peter's
comprehension, but it is not beyond our comprehension. It is
as if those who most mightily clung to atavistic clairvoyance
and opposed those who were retarded and had lost the ancient
vision - has now shifted to millions of people like Peter, who,
now cling to failed physical world materialism in the same way
that older cultures clung to remnants of ancient clairvoyance.
If you cling to the "Church of the Unrisen Light" you
are also duped and we know that everyone has a pocket in themselves
that is in denial that the Christ could do and be the Science
of what the I AM is. Steiner did not doubt it.

The insights into the mighty divine, compassion
and empowering the I AM are the pivotal shifts and details that
Steiner worked out for understanding the I AM in human evolution
and the I AM manifestation in full glory from Golgotha. Which
as Peter has admitted, Anthropsophy as Spiritual Science, connected
to Steiner's research, cannot be racist.

You see the advanced ideas that Peter is talking
about, are the common things people cling to i.e. materialism,
dialectical materialism and atheism. These same souls avidly
martyred, ostercized and cast out those who in ancient times
had lost the vision of the divine as outcasts of their tribe.
Now the tables are once again turned in the time we are living
in. Those who approach Spiritual Science are merging consciously
with their I AM's and thinking, with the new capacities connected
to Rising and expansion of the Etheric Christ, after his narrow
physical passage way, as the I AM, into the core of Earth life.

Those who fight vigorously against such opening,
Rising Etheric clarity, are terrified that they have not located
their I AM yet. Materialism is the same or equates with clinging
to old superstition, memory and racism. Fundamentalism, clinging
to dogma, or pathological, illogical ideas become psychological
tics in the soul when failed education infects ideas. Therefore
Peter manifests Asperger's Syndrome as a psychopathology of undeveloped,
imbalance of the I Am and its integration with the Astral body
and higher members of his being.

Peter you are an idiot! Forward, retardation,
going backward, Oh what an unlearned child you are. Because Evolving
is seemingly forward it makes a nice term doesn't it? The condition
of retardation doesn't merely come from races... or races at
all. Retardation comes from Retarding beings. You are such a
retard.

Diana to guess who:

Bradford this is just a shameful rant.
What is wrong with you people? Why doesn't somebody tell him
to act like a human being? This is garbage, this isn't "spirituality."

Diana, I did try. I did I did I did. I tried
to get this politically correct by changing the word 'retard'
to backwards thinking. So, maybe you could imagine my politically
correct understanding: 'Peter you are such a backward thinker'.
The 'Peter you are such an idiot I can do nothing about. Peter
is giving as much as he is getting so it all flies out in the
wash.

Okay, so is it accurate to say that Andrea
and Patrick agree that it is not racist to say that certain races
are higher than others, are more advanced than others, are more
spiritually developed than others? Or am I twisting and perverting
someting or other again?

Ok Peter. it's Eastertime and I'll be kind, maybe for the last
time and I'll repeat things written thousands of times here.

Obviously, one who thinks about "higher"
and "lower" races could be., and often is, a racist.
But the point is what is the meaning of "race" in our
discussions ? Since you jumped in here you went on writing on
and on that Steiner, in his early times as a Teos.Soc's memeber,
made "racist" statements . The truth, as tens of litmates
have demonstrated almost 109876 times, is that he used the term
"root race" and "race" in his early writings
in a totally different from the "nazilike" way you
try to impose to it with your ill-minded fantasy.

The truth is THAT he used such terms to be
easily understood by his fellows. The truth is that he used those
terms just in the way he used during the following years, as
founder of GAS, the term "cultures" : namely to explain
his historical insights and the links among them and Mankind's
development.

The truth is also what i've been asking two
months ago in the beginning of this ping pong , and now YOU HAVE
TO ANSWER!

Peter, ARE YOU REALLY NUTS (DO YOU BELIEVE
IN THE CRAP YOU WRITE) OR ARE YOU ONLY HAVING A JOB ?

Bye Mr. Charles Dexter Ward.

A.

I would be very interested in learning what both of you actually
think on this question. Thanks,

It is not racist to understand that racial
forms disappear and are replaced by new ones and that this is
connected with progressive evolution.

Of course it's racist, it's a bedrock belief
of many racists! One race isn't more evolved than another, Tarjei
 now or in the past. We just aren't divided that way by
race. We're all in this together. "Evolving racial forms"
doesn't hold water scientifically, morally, religiously, humanistically,
or anywhich way. It is an idea that has been assigned to the
junk heap of science and religion. (Much as anthroposophists
would like to cast the problem as a conflict between science
and religion, it's not. It's generally rejected by both.)

A view that recommends race-mixing, integration,
and assimilation and is therefore anti-racist.

Totally ridiculous. Do you think racists just
think people of other races have cooties or something and don't
want to "mix" with them? Often racists have no problem
mixing with other races and certainly often want them integrated
into society in all kinds of ways. (Since you think if you sleep
with or marry people of other races, you can't be racist, maybe
you really do think "mixing" makes you not racist.)

Hi Tarjei, you now say that you find something
inaccurate about my summary of Steiner's teachings on racial
evolution. This is a reversal from your prior post, of course,
but we can set that aside if you like. Could you simply state
what you think was inaccurate in my summary?

The answer to that question depends
upon whether or not the yellow, red, brown and black races were
"main races" according to HPB.

Tarjei

Detlef Hardorp adds: Let's settle on the way I phrased the question
in my last post, otherwise PS will simply say that HPB didn't
use "main races". She certainly did use "root
races", though! So permit me, Tarjei, to rephrase your statement
thus:

The answer to that question depends upon whether or not the
yellow, red, brown and black races were "root races"
according to HPB.

I'm glad you folks all agree that it is time
for an answer! But maybe PS has been desperately leafing through
the collected works of Blavatsky for the past weeks, looking
for a quotation, without success so far. Is that why he's been
off-list for days at a time? Or maybe his dog chewed up some
of his occult literature and he is unable to check. Let's give
the poor man the benefit of the doubt! I'm sure he has a good
reason for not answering.

It is not racist to understand that racial
forms disappear and are replaced by new ones and that this is
connected with progressive evolution.

Of course it's racist, it's a bedrock belief
of many racists! One race isn't more evolved than another, Tarjei
 now or in the past. We just aren't divided that way by
race. We're all in this together. "Evolving racial forms"
doesn't hold water scientifically, morally, religiously, humanistically,
or anywhich way. It is an idea that has been assigned to the
junk heap of science and religion. (Much as anthroposophists
would like to cast the problem as a conflict between science
and religion, it's not. It's generally rejected by both.)

You're playing a broken record, Diana, and
throwing a lot of irrational polemical claims into it, about
having scientists and priests and popes and wise philosophers
agreeing with you and so forth. Why not throw in a few initiates
too? Reminds me of my teenage years when my dad had a fallout
with his second wife and it looked as if they were headed for
a divorce. Remember hearing her mouthing off on the phone about
my father's drinking and my pot smoking and she being so perfect,
although she was the most dysfunctional of us all with a heavy
hangover every other day, which put her in one helluva mood.
And yes, she was going to do us in, my dad and me, because she
had her doctors and her police and her lawyers and who-knows-what,
and it was all a balloon full of hot air.

A view that recommends race-mixing, integration,
and assimilation and is therefore anti-racist.

Totally ridiculous. Do you think racists
just think people of other races have cooties or something and
don't want to "mix" with them? Often racists have no
problem mixing with other races and certainly often want them
integrated into society in all kinds of ways. (Since you think
if you sleep with or marry people of other races, you can't be
racist, maybe you really do think "mixing" makes you
not racist.)

Frankly my dear, I don't give damn about whether
or not you call me a racist or anything else of your choosing.
Besides, your obviously twisted definitions of words like "racism"
have invalidated your broken records of confused polemics long
ago.

It is not racist to understand that racial
forms disappear and are replaced by new ones and that this is
connected with progressive evolution.

and then Diana said:

Of course it's racist, it's a bedrock belief
of many racists! One race isn't more evolved than another, Tarjei
 now or in the past. We just aren't divided that way by
race. We're all in this together. "Evolving racial forms"
doesn't hold water scientifically, morally, religiously, humanistically,
or anywhich way. It is an idea that has been assigned to the
junk heap of science and religion. (Much as anthroposophists
would like to cast the problem as a conflict between science
and religion, it's not. It's generally rejected by both.)

and now Deborah says:

I've got a problem with the broad generalizations
you're presenting Diana. There is certain scientific research
that debunked the racist assumptions that used to be common.
And then there is the "sense of the times" or what
is generally assumed to be true. What it looks like to me is
that you are taking the current set of general assumptions of
our current time (say the last 40 years) and treating these assumptions
as 1)scientifically proven and 2)eternally right. People used
to be stupid and they had all sorts of silly ideas, but we have
now got it figured out, the whole thing is completely settled
and anybody who says anything that doesn't fit into the current
set of assumptions is wrong, big time. That seems to me to be
the underlying line of reasoning. Also inherent (to me) in this
line of reasoning is a closing off of any new thoughts on the
topic or further development or understanding. There is a sort
of "Whew! That's settled quality!"

Steiner talks about prehistory and racial
differences. None of his statements have been scientifically
debunked. They've just been ignored. They haven't been disproven.
Perhaps somebody could disprove them by some means. I'm open
to the possibility. Your statements that such concepts (and I
am talking only about prehistory) are wrong because everyone
now understands them to be wrong don't really hold up.

I'll see if I can find the race entry from
the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to give a flavor of the commonly
accepted truth of 100 years ago.

Peter you are an idiot! Forward, retardation,
going backward, Oh what an unlearned child you are. Because Evolving
is seemingly forward it makes a nice term doesn't it? The condition
of retardation doesn't merely come from races... or races at
all. Retardation comes from Retarding beings. You are such a
retard.

Bradford this is just a shameful rant.
What is wrong with you people? Why doesn't somebody tell him
to act like a human being? This is garbage, this isn't "spirituality."

Obviously, one who thinks about "higher"
and "lower" races could be., and often is, a racist.

Great, we agree on something. Why isn't it racist when Steiner
talks about higher and lower races? Just because it's all part
of a nice spiritual narrative?

But the point is what is the meaning of "race" in
our discussions ?

That certainly is not the point. Racists and their critics rarely
agree on what the term "race" means. This scarcely
means that we can't discuss racism.

Since you jumped in here you went on writing
on and on that Steiner, in his early times as a Teos.Soc's memeber,
made "racist" statements . The truth, as tens of litmates
have demonstrated almost 109876 times, is that he used the term
"root race" and "race" in his early writings
in a totally different from the "nazilike" way you
try to impose to it with your ill-minded fantasy.

That makes no sense, Andrea. Very many racist statements are
totally different from Nazi racism. There are many forms of racist
thinking. Nazism is not a particularly representative form. People
who use the term "race" by ranking it into higher and
lower categories are using the term in a racist fashion, regardless
of whether their version of "race" lines up with Nazi
versions.

The truth is THAT he used such terms to
be easily understood by his fellows.

But a lot of his fellows understood Steiner's message in a racist
fashion, from Karutz to Heise to Uehli etc etc. Why do some of
you keep ignoring this fact?

The truth is that he used those terms just
in the way he used during the following years, as founder of
GAS, the term "cultures"

Using the terms "race" and "culture" interchangeably
is a common hallmark of racist discourse. It ties cultural differences
into purportedly biological ones.

Peter, ARE YOU REALLY NUTS (DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE CRAP YOU
WRITE) OR ARE YOU ONLY HAVING A JOB ?

Yes, I really believe in the crap I write. When Steiner says
that black people do not belong in Europe, I think that statement
is racist. When Steiner says that indigenous peoples are decadent
and degenerated, I think that statement is racist. He made quite
a few such statements. The fact that these statements appear
alongside other warm and fuzzy statements does not magically
transfrom their racist character.

What it looks like to me is that you are
taking the current set of general assumptions of our current
time (say the last 40 years) and treating these assumptions as
1)scientifically proven and 2)eternally right.

I'm quite comfortable with that. Present scientific
understanding definitely suggests that the actual differences
between races, in any meaningful way, are minuscule. They hold
perhaps minor implications for medicine, genetic variation in
susceptibility to disease (sometimes). There is far greater variation
among individuals of the same race than between individuals
of different races, if you discount very superficial things like
skin pigmentation and hair texture.

I think this makes a very good premise for
understanding race today. I'm quite willing to recognize it as
tied to scientific understandings today. (I am not the one declaring
my views to be written in some Cosmic Chronicle somewhere; I'm
happy to acknowledge their source in the dreaded "materialist"
science of the times.) It is a positive understanding of race
because it is not socially divisive or spiritually arrogant,
as is the search for "spiritual meaning" in race.

When, or if, this consensus changes, or new
evidence shows hitherto unrecognized differences between racial
groups that in fact suggests their spiritual inequality, I'll
reconsider. I'm not likely to reconsider on the basis of a guru's
mystical teachings.

Also inherent (to me) in this line of reasoning
is a closing off of any new thoughts on the topic or further
development or understanding.

No, I'm open and welcome to all sorts of new
thoughts on the topic. Feel free to post some. Steiner's thoughts
on these topics weren't "new," they were rehashed racial
prejudices common to his era, similar to the examples you post
in your next post. Why you're holding this up as something that
exonerates Steiner, or provides enlightenment today, I can't
imagine.

There is a sort of "Whew! That's settled
quality!"

Yeah :) I think it would be real nice to get
it settled that races are equal. I'd feel good about that, a
nice "Whew" feeling exactly. Wishful thinking I guess.
Too bad some people think it's a good idea to keep considering
warmed-over, turn-of-last-century racial doctrines rather than
"settling" for boring old, "politically correct"
racial equality.

Steiner talks about prehistory and racial
differences. None of his statements have been scientifically
debunked. They've just been ignored. They haven't been disproven.

sigh This is the Daniel Hindes school of thought.
If no one's written up all the scientific reasons the moon is
NOT made of green cheese (well, bad example, since they
have), we will stubbornly defend our right to recite our doctrine
according to which the moon IS made of green cheese and you are
attacking our spirituality if gimme a hard time about this. LOL
okay by me if you want to believe the moon is made of green cheese.
(Uh-oh am I smearing you with "association tactics"?)
If you want to believe races have spiritual meaning, you're holding
onto views that are dangerous and divisive, and you can continue
to expect people to challenge them.

Perhaps somebody could disprove them by
some means. I'm open to the possibility.

Yeah, me too. I'm open to anything anybody
wants to prove or disprove. I'm not swayed by Tarjei's tantrums
or Bradford's foaming at the mouth that people who dare to question
his mystical truths are "retards."

I didn't call our listmates puerile, I
said that some of them are beholden to ideas about public discourse
that I consider puerile. One good example is the refusal to distinguish
people from ideas.

Daniel:

Peter, why is it that you are unable to distinguish
people from ideas? You are getting quite a bit of milage accusing
others of this fault, but you specifically rejected this approach
to Steiner twice.

Patrick:

You are saying that you only want to deal
with the substantive issues at stake.

Peter Staudenmaier:

That would be nice, don't you think? There's
lots of Steiner texts we could be discussing. I say let's get
on with it.

Daniel:

It would be nice, if you didn't keep running
away from the discussion whenever the weakness of your argument
became evident. (And for clarity, I don't mean taking a few days
off from the list, I mean dropping threads and changing topics).

Patrick:

If I understand you rightly, evolution
is only pertinent as a concept for minerals, plants, and animals,
in other words, the natural world.

Peter Staudenmaier:

That is what the term 'evolution' generally
refers to in a biological context. Do you disagree?

Patrick:

So, you are not including human beings,
am I right?

Peter Staudenmaier:

No, you are not right. Human beings are
part of the natural world and one of the products of natural
evolution, in my view.

Patrick:

It seems to follow therefore that you do
not believe in the evolution of ideas and that certainly one
idea is not more advanced than another.

Peter Staudenmaier:

I do believe in the evolution of ideas.
This has nothing at all to do with natural evolution. They are
fundamentally different things.

Daniel:

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve? Doesn't
this seem a bit illogical to you? Oh, I forgot, logic is, well,
somewhat difficult on a consistent basis.

It is very easy to alter my opinion. Just
present a persuasive argument and provide some evidence for it.

Daniel:

Hah! You lack the ability to think well enough
to recognize a persuasive argument, which is why you have not
"heard" one yet. You can't even translate German accurately
or grasp the differences between Theosophical root races and
biological races.

I predict that you will never be persuaded or recognize a persuasive
argument, regardless of how much effort your interlocutors put
into the matter.

Patrick:

In your response to my last post, and I
paraphrase, you stated you did not think that at any one time
in history any culture could exist that was more advanced than
the other's.

Peter Staudenmaier:

That's basically correct.

Daniel:

Cultural relativism.

Peter Staudenmaier:

[Evolution] largely operates by natural
selection, a mostly random process that is not progressive and
has no goal. None of this has anything to do with cultures.

Daniel:

Evolution is not progressive? Snails become
apes with no intermediate stages? Where did you go to school?

Snails do not become apes, Daniel. And
no, evolution is not progressive in the sense that Steiner claimed.
It does not proceed from less perfect to more perfect forms.

Peter

Bradford balks;

Gettin' a little punchy here ain't ya Peter?
Ya know a butterfly, and a caterpillar are the most elementary
lessons in progress. Not even to include a reality from Jesus
to Christ. If I wanted to make a plant have mobility, cloning
has also the potential to inch forward. But since you are in
the caterpillar phase of understanding the I Am, we must go easy
on you.

Science talks a great deal about dolphins
and Dogs. But if you need help in understanding such concepts,
please, don't be afraid to ask. For it is gonna be a long road
for you to understand curious realities of nature, let alone
the magnificent realities of the human I AM. tish! tish!, such
a long way to go for you.

What is culture to you Diana and does it evolve
through different groups of people and or epochs of time in your
understandings? Have various cultures added and or subtracted
from the ongoing existance of mankind? Or is it all the same
in your mind nothing good and nothing bad?

What is culture to you Diana and does it
evolve through different groups of people and or epochs of time
in your understandings? Have various cultures added and or subtracted
from the ongoing existance of mankind? Or is it all the same
in your mind nothing good and nothing bad?

d

Deborah says:

Contradiction arising somewhere around here.
All cultures are of equal value and no culture is an improvement
on a previous culture, nor a degeneration of a previous culture.
Have I got that right?

Okay. At the same time, certain people tend
to assume that the current round of cultural assumptions (evolution
is not progressive) (attaching significance to tribe, family
or racial stream, is always incorrect) (polygamy is now and has
always been sexist, evil and mean) trump all past cultural assumptions.
All cultures are equal but ours is right? And not only right,
but eternally right. And not the diverse, confused, progressing,
evolving real life culture represented by billions of people,
but the culture represented by the opinions of one or two people
on this list.

By the way, I threw in the bit about polygamy
just to provide an example that I hoped would appeal to everyone.
If there is anyone on the list who is a practicing polygamist,
I'm sorry if I insulted your religious or ethical beliefs. (But
I don't want to hear about it, there are limits to my tolerance.)

At the same time, certain people tend to
assume that the current round of cultural assumptions (evolution
is not progressive) (attaching significance to tribe, family
or racial stream, is always incorrect) (polygamy is now and has
always been sexist, evil and mean) trump all past cultural assumptions.
All cultures are equal but ours is right? And not only right,
but eternally right. And not the diverse, confused, progressing,
evolving real life culture represented by billions of people,
but the culture represented by the opinions of one or two people
on this list.

I think you're missing the crucial distinction between saying
that entire cultures as a whole are better or worse and
saying that specific beliefs are better or worse. The
first kind of claim is silly and pointless. The second kind of
claim is a necessary part of public discussion.

Peter

Deborah says:

Contradiction arising somewhere around
here. All cultures are of equal value and no culture is an improvement
on a previous culture, nor a degeneration of a previous culture.
Have I got that right?

Okay. At the same time, certain people
tend to assume that the current round of cultural assumptions
(evolution is not progressive) (attaching significance to tribe,
family or racial stream, is always incorrect) (polygamy is now
and has always been sexist, evil and mean) trump all past cultural
assumptions. All cultures are equal but ours is right? And not
only right, but eternally right. And not the diverse, confused,
progressing, evolving real life culture represented by billions
of people, but the culture represented by the opinions of one
or two people on this list.

By the way, I threw in the bit about polygamy
just to provide an example that I hoped would appeal to everyone.
If there is anyone on the list who is a practicing polygamist,
I'm sorry if I insulted your religious or ethical beliefs. (But
I don't want to hear about it, there are limits to my tolerance.)

I think you're missing the crucial distinction
between saying that entire cultures as a whole are better
or worse and saying that specific beliefs are better or
worse. The first kind of claim is silly and pointless. The second
kind of claim is a necessary part of public discussion.

I wish El Eswahn (Lightsearcher) would play
ping-pong with you, because I believe you guys have a lot in
common. There are cultures dominated by brutality. As a whole,
they're no better or worse than peaceful and tolerant cultures.
There have been carnivorous warrior cultures that only prey on
other cultures, where art and handicrafts are cultivated, through
mayhem and robbery - but all these cultures are completely equal
in the name of post-relativism or philo-primitivism or something
like that.

Oooohhhhh Peter, you are so in trouble. :)
Steiner was neither as can be seen by his volumes and volumes
of written word. As can be shown by the many schools opening
all over the world, and the students he has inspired to look
past what society teaches us on race, he says over and over and
over, look past the physical, national and blood ties.

Detlef has shown you the door. Red pill or
Blue pill Peter, how much longer would you like to keep this
charade going on?

Nice statement of principles. Yet with
Steiner you will toss all this to the side. Steiner was a racist
and and an anti-Semite, right?

Yes, I think that Steiner was a racist
and an antisemite, among many other things. This does not meant
that Steiner is my "enemy". It means that his racist
and antisemitic ideas are my "enemy".

Daniel:

I don't think I have ever claimed that you
find Steiner your enemy. I am calling you on your hypocritical
tendency to whine about how other people can't separate the person
from the argument, and then turn around and commit the very sin
you accuse others of in Steiner's case. This is just another
example of your repeated logical inconsistencies of argumentation.

Evolution is not progressive? Snails become
apes with no intermediate stages?

Peter Staudenmaier:

Snails do not become apes, Daniel. And
no, evolution is not progressive in the sense that Steiner claimed.
It does not proceed from less perfect to more perfect forms.

Daniel:

Care to explain what all the geneological
trees I saw in the dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York are about then? They had all sorts of evolutionary
progressions illustrated in careful detail. They also had a nice
progression of horse skeletons lined up to illustrate the issue.
The entire point of the exhibit was about how forms progressed.
An appendage that goes from a fin to a hand becomes more perfectly
suitable for holding things. Increase in cranial capacity is
linked to the development of a species capable of thought. In
addition to deficiencies in logic, math and philosophy, I suspect
your education lacks a comprehensive background in natural sciences
as well.

Just how did Steiner explain evolution? (I'd like to know in
more detail what you are denying).

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Peter Staudenmaier:

Not by natural selection. If you believe
that cultures evolve by natural selection, then I think you have
an inadequate grasp of the concept. Cultures are neither genetic
nor hereditary.

Daniel:

Peter, one of the first things you learn in
Biology is that evolution does not equal natural selection. There
are many theories of evolution. Relativly few of them involve
natural selection as the method of evolution (though the generally
accepted ones do). Your education might benefit from a few basic
biology courses.

Repeat: "Evolution does not equal natural selection."

Good, now I hope that you won't misapply the methods of biology
to culture (you of all people should know what a mess that creates).

Back to my origional question:

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Note: I did not ask if cultures evolved through
natural selection. I asked if they evolved at all by any mechanism.

Care to explain what all the geneological trees I saw in the
dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New
York are about then?

Sure! That's an excellent example. This sort of visual progression
of forms is exactly what misleads people who don't understand
natural selection into thinking that it is a teleological and
perfectionist process. But there's somebody who can explain it
all much better than I can, the late Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote
quite accessibly on that very topic. I recommended his work a
few days back. I also recommended the work of several other major
contemporary evolutionary theorists, such as Ernst Mayr. I think
you would do well to look into this body of work. Mayr would
be an especially good place to start; not only was he one of
the architects of the modern evolutionary synthesis, but in one
sense he's a bit closer to your position: he strongly defends
the 'adaptationist paradigm' which Gould and Lewontin so incisively
critiqued back in 1979. Even Mayr, while granting some versions
of 'progress' in evolution, flatly rejects the perfectionism
that Steiner espoused; see for example his recent book What Evolution
Is. You could even go all the way back to George Gaylord Simpson,
another architect of the modern evolutionary synthesis; his 1949
book The Meaning of Evolution contains a whole chapter on "The
Concept of Progress in Evolution", which explains what sorts
of progress are and are not applicable to natural evolution,
while firmly refuting perfectionism.

Peter

Hi Daniel, you wrote:

Evolution is not progressive? Snails become
apes with no intermediate stages?

Peter Staudenmaier:

Snails do not become apes, Daniel. And
no, evolution is not progressive in the sense that Steiner claimed.
It does not proceed from less perfect to more perfect forms.

Daniel:

Care to explain what all the geneological
trees I saw in the dinosaur halls of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York are about then? They had all sorts of evolutionary
progressions illustrated in careful detail. They also had a nice
progression of horse skeletons lined up to illustrate the issue.
The entire point of the exhibit was about how forms progressed.
An appendage that goes from a fin to a hand becomes more perfectly
suitable for holding things. Increase in cranial capacity is
linked to the development of a species capable of thought. In
addition to deficiencies in logic, math and philosophy, I suspect
your education lacks a comprehensive background in natural sciences
as well.

Just how did Steiner explain evolution? (I'd like to know in
more detail what you are denying).

There are many theories of evolution. Relativly
few of them involve natural selection as the method of evolution
(though the generally accepted ones do).

Peter Staudenmaier:

Yep. The generally accepted ones are the
ones I was talking about. By all means feel free to disagree
with the theory of natural selection.

Daniel:

I've been careful not to take any position
on the issue. I don't feel I have sufficient training in biology
or evolutionary theory to fob myself off as an expert on the
issue. Unlike yourself I do not consider myself an instant expert
in any area in which I have read the dust jacket for a dozen
books. My own background is strongest in history - and there
the debates around the various forms of evolution come up in
a number of contexts. Personally I see no reason to disagree
with natural selection as the means of evolution, but my opinion
is worth very little in this area, as I have not studied it in
depth. I do find Steiner's position relative to Lyell, Lamarck,
Darwin and Haeckel interesting. I also enjoy Gould's writing
on the issue. But that does not make me an expert, so I won't
talk like one.

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Peter Staudenmaier:

Not by natural selection. If you believe
that cultures evolve by natural selection, then I think you have
an inadequate grasp of the concept. Cultures are neither genetic
nor hereditary.

Daniel:

Peter, one of the first things you learn in
Biology is that evolution does not equal natural selection. There
are many theories of evolution. Relativly few of them involve
natural selection as the method of evolution (though the generally
accepted ones do). Your education might benefit from a few basic
biology courses.

Repeat: "Evolution does not equal natural
selection."

Good, now I hope that you won't misapply the methods of biology
to culture (you of all people should know what a mess that creates).

Back to my origional question:

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Note: I did not ask if cultures evolved through
natural selection. I asked if they evolved at all by any mechanism.

Another difficult question that Peter Staudenmaier
continues to run away from: cultural evolution. He has indignantly
declared that natural selection does not apply to cultures. I
don't know why he thought anyone would claim such a thing. But
he cannot explain if he feels cultures evolve at all, or how.
Condescend to me, Peter. Try answering this.

So the human body evolved, and ideas evolve,
but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Peter Staudenmaier:

Not by natural selection. If you believe
that cultures evolve by natural selection, then I think you have
an inadequate grasp of the concept. Cultures are neither genetic
nor hereditary.

Daniel:

Peter, one of the first things you learn
in Biology is that evolution does not equal natural selection.
There are many theories of evolution. Relativly few of them involve
natural selection as the method of evolution (though the generally
accepted ones do). Your education might benefit from a few basic
biology courses.

Repeat: "Evolution does not equal
natural selection."

Good, now I hope that you won't misapply the methods of biology
to culture (you of all people should know what a mess that creates).

Back to my origional question:

So the human body evolved, and ideas
evolve, but cultures (composed of bodies and ideas) don't evolve?

Note: I did not ask if cultures evolved
through natural selection. I asked if they evolved at all by
any mechanism.